Bard and Liberator: The Link Prescription Form

In the Bard Liberator catheter kickback settlement, C.R. Bard and its affiliate Liberator Medical Supply agreed to pay $17 million to resolve allegations that free samples and discounts encouraged urology practices to use Bard’s prescription form. The form was called Link. The alleged bargain put the practice’s supply budget into a decision that should serve the patient.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced the settlement on January 23, 2025. The allegations concerned intermittent catheters, conduct from 2016 to February 2020, and claims under the federal False Claims Act and state false claims laws.

The Bard Link Prescription Form, Samples and Discounts

In the Liberator settlement, the government alleged that Bard used samples and discounts to persuade urology practice groups to use its Link prescription form for intermittent catheters. The alleged benefits included excessive free samples and savings on supplies used in the office. Bard had entered the intermittent catheter business in 2013 by acquiring Rochester Medical, a developer and supplier of urological products. Soon afterward, the government alleged, Bard sales representatives began using discounts on, and free samples of, in-office urological products to convince practice groups to make Link, a form listing Bard’s intermittent catheters, their standard catheter prescription form.

Under the alleged arrangement, the practice saved money on supplies used in its own office while Bard gained influence over what physicians prescribed for patients. The office’s purchasing budget and the patient’s prescription were tied together.

An employee who knows how a form reached the practice, what the sales representative offered with it, or why the practice started using it may understand the commercial purpose behind a document that otherwise looks like routine paperwork.

We examine the sales offer and prescribing paperwork together when assessing a health care kickback case. The offer explains what the practice stood to gain and what the manufacturer wanted in return.

How Does a Prescription Form Connect a Catheter Manufacturer to a Durable Medical Equipment Supplier?

Through the patient, and in this case through the manufacturer’s own supplier. The urology practice writes the catheter prescription, and the patient takes it to a durable medical equipment supplier to buy the catheters. Two years after the Rochester Medical acquisition, Bard announced that it was acquiring Liberator Medical and Liberator Holdings to create its own medical equipment subsidiary, selling intermittent catheters directly to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The government alleged that Bard then used the Link form to encourage urology practices to prescribe intermittent catheters through Liberator Medical rather than other suppliers. On that account, the office benefit bought the form, and the form steered the order to the supplier Bard owned.

That is why the arrangement matters in durable medical equipment fraud: on the government’s account, the manufacturer influencing the prescription and the supplier filling it belonged to the same corporate family. The supplier sees the order. The practice knows what accompanied the form. Understanding the sales arrangement means connecting those parts of the transaction.

Catheter supply economics help explain why that relationship matters. In its August 2022 report on intermittent urinary catheters, the HHS Office of Inspector General found that Medicare and beneficiaries paid $407 million for the items in fiscal year 2020, while suppliers paid approximately $121 million to acquire them. Medicare’s payments were 3.4 times what suppliers paid. For a manufacturer that also owns the supplier, each prescription carries both the product sale and the supplier’s Medicare payment.

Catheters also belong to the recurring supply side of the business. Intermittent catheters are single-use, and a patient with urinary retention uses them to drain the bladder several times a day. A patient relationship can support replenishment orders, giving the initial prescribing decision commercial significance beyond one shipment. The government payment comes downstream, but the opportunity to influence which product gets prescribed begins at the practice.

Who Sees a Prescribing Kickback From the Outside?

The whistleblower was a former employee of 180 Medical, according to the government’s settlement announcement. That company is itself a durable medical equipment supplier billing Medicare, so the whistleblower watched the market from the supplier side, where prescriptions steered toward Liberator would show. The case shows why a supplier-side view of the market can matter even when the alleged benefits are offered by a manufacturer to a medical practice.

People at different points in that business see different things. A sales employee may know the terms offered to practices. A practice employee may know why a particular prescription form came into use. Someone at a supplier may see the resulting orders. The significance lies in how those pieces fit together.

Those are perspectives we explore with a potential whistleblower. Someone familiar with the business may know why the practice changed forms and what it got in return. That knowledge can explain the sales deal behind the prescription.

What the Bard and Liberator Settlement Resolved

The settlement resolved allegations involving the prescription-form arrangement under federal and state false claims laws. The whistleblower’s lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of Georgia. The investigators reflected the programs at stake: the Georgia Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Division and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service worked the case with the HHS Office of Inspector General and the FBI. The defense investigators said such conduct could harm TRICARE, the military health care system.

The Justice Department said the whistleblower would receive a share of the settlement.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. For an employee or industry participant who recognizes an arrangement like this, our work is to connect what they know about the sales terms and prescribing decisions to a potential whistleblower case.

You Know What Came With the Form

If you saw the samples, discounts or office-supply deal behind a catheter prescription form, tell our whistleblower experts how the arrangement worked. We build your strongest kickback whistleblower case around that commercial knowledge, bring in healthcare kickback whistleblower lawyers who understand durable medical equipment sales, and stay beside you through the pursuit of a recovery.